The present invention relates to apparatus and methods for splicing a paper web on a rewinder, super calendar, or coater.
After paper is manufactured on a papermaking machine, it is wound onto jumbo reels for removal from the papermaking machine. These large reels of paper of up to 400 inches in width and 180 inches in diameter and weighing more than one-hundred and seventy tons are removed from the papermaking machine and further processed to make smaller reels or individual sheets on a rewinder. Paper on a jumbo reel may be further processed through a super calendar or an off machine coater which requires unwinding the paper web from the jumbo reel. To avoid rethreading of winders, coaters, and calendars, and to avoid wasting paper, it is normal practice to splice a new reel of paper onto the end or tail of a previous reel.
Paper can be unwound from a reel off the top or off the bottom of the reel. Which side of the web faces upwardly depends on whether the roll is mounted so that the web comes off the top, or off the bottom of the roll. In the case of a jumbo reel, where the paper may have different surface finishes on opposed sides, various uses of the paper may require that one or the other side face outwardly with respect to a formed reel.
A typical example would be where sets, small reels for printing, are taken off a jumbo and where a particular grade paper or linerboard has a better side which must be positioned to enter the press uppermost.
A typical unwinder incorporates a drive system which can unwind a jumbo reel so the reel rotates in the clockwise or counter clockwise direction. If a web is drawn to the left off the top of the reel, the reel will rotate in a counter clockwise direction. For the same unwinding, if the reel is positioned so paper can be again drawn to the left but off the bottom of the reel, the reel will rotate in the clockwise direction.
Where paper is being drawn off the top of a reel, the normal procedure for changing reels is to stop the winder and the system that is receiving the web, and cut the web free from the spool. The spool is then removed from the winder drive system. A new parent reel which has been prepared by placing double sided tape along the beginning, or start of the reel is then positioned in the winder drive. Two operators lift the tail of the web from the previous reel and position it over the top of the reel where it is brought into engagement with the double sided tape to form a splice. The difficulties of forming a spice where the web is to be drawn off the bottom of a reel are such that the normal practice is to simply rethread the web into the rewinder by cutting a tail.
What is needed is a simple, speedy method and apparatus which can splice a web tail onto the web from a new parent reel so as to draw the web off either the top or the bottom of the reel.